Tuesday, February 23, 2010

96 players stole at least 10 bases last year. That means that in a twelve-team league, it would be possible for each team to have 8 hitters steal over 10 bases. That sounds like a lot of players.

But how many of those steals are "clean;" how many of those stolen base threats have a decent chance of scoring runs and hitting for average? Nobody wants 10+ steals if they are attached to a part-time player who struggles to hit over .260 (yes, I'm talking about you, Bonifacio).

Well, here are the players who had a contact%* of over 83% in 2009:*Total percentage of contact when swinging at all pitches.93.2% Juan Pierre (1.00)**93.0% Dustin Pedroia (1.64)90.4% Robinson Cano (.48)89.9% Denard Span (.79)89.6% Todd Helton (1.22)89.6% Martin Prado (.61)89.0% Erick Aybar (.56)88.7% Ichiro Suzuki (.45)88.7% Shane Victorino (.85)88.5% James Loney (1.03)88.4% Jacoby Ellsbury (.66)88.0% A.J. Pierzynski (.46)87.8% Brett Gardner (.65)87.3% Elvis Andrus (.52)87.0% Yadier Molina (1.28)86.9% Ryan Theriot (.55)86.2% Julio Borbon (.54)85.2% Asdrubal Cabrera (.49)85.0% Nyger Morgan (.54)84.2% Chris Coghlan (.69)83.9% Alcides Escobar (.22)**Eye (also known as Batting Eye), which is defined as walks divided by strikeouts, is in parenthesis. This metric is considered by some to be a good measure of a player's strike zone judgment. The very best MLB hitters have batting eye ratios over 1.00. Eye ratios of less than 0.50 are indicative of a free-swinging approach to hitting and poor strike-zone judgment. Players with eye ratios of .70 or better have a greater probability of maintaining a high batting average than players with eye ratios of .50 or less.